


your hands protect the flames from the wild winds around you

by icannotlivewithoutmysoul



Category: Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 09:48:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2808077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icannotlivewithoutmysoul/pseuds/icannotlivewithoutmysoul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On her thirteenth birthday, Josephine March becomes Jo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	your hands protect the flames from the wild winds around you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sinope](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sinope/gifts).



> I meant to fulfill your request, but to be honest this semester has been quite simply hectic and I'm afraid I didn't have the time to do enough research to do the topic justice without incurring in gross generalizations or baseless assumptions. So I tackled it in a different manner. However, I would like to explore your prompt again in a couple of months, after I've had the time to inform myself properly. If you would like that, please let me know once the authors are revealed and I promise I'll add it to my list. Merry Christmas!

i.

Josephine March is five years old when she first accompanies her mother on one of her visits to less fortunate families. She’s excited to be sharing this with Marmee, especially because Meg has been going on about those ‘mother-daughter visits’ for months. She herself has been begging to join them for several weeks now.

She bounces on her toes, delighted and impatient all at once. Marmee tells her to be calm, but Josephine knows that her mother is pleased to see her so excited. These visits are important to her, and she wants her four daughters to value them as much as she.

They stop before a small house with peeling walls and broken windows.   She hesitates, her little hand clutching her mother’s tighter. This house looks… no, it _feels_ sad. Something unfamiliar bubbles in her chest, and it will be some years yet before she identifies it as despair.

The woman who opens the door is pretty, with long brown hair and green eyes, but, like the house, she looks sad and tired. Her mouth curves in a welcoming smile when she sees Marmee in front of her.

“Come in, please. Michael, mind your sisters,” she tells the boy in short ripped trousers and an old green shirt, who nods and kneels beside two little girls playing with a rag doll. “If you please, madam, your girls may play with my children while I show you about the house.”

Marmee agrees, and Meg and Josephine walk cautiously toward the three children huddled together before the hearth. Josephine shivers. There is no fire burning, and the room is so very cold.

“Do you want to see our doll?” The younger of the girls, a child around Josephine’s age, asks. “Her name is Jane.”

Meg looks interested, but Josephine turns to study the boy instead. He, too, has a toy in his hands: a small dark soldier carved in wood. When he catches her watching it, he holds it out.

“Do you want to see it?” He offers, handing it to her when she nods.

It’s a pretty thing, clearly made with much care. Josephine lifts her eyes to Michael, inquiringly.

“Father made it before he died. We used to play soldiers.”

Josephine thinks that sounds much more interesting than playing house.

                                

ii.

She doesn’t like Aunt March.

The woman doesn’t play, she thinks sullenly. Moreover, she tries to forbid her from playing, too.

“Young ladies are not meant to play soldiers,” she scolds, frost covering her voice and eyes. “If you must play, play lady of the manor. It is what you will be when you grow up.”

She doesn’t think it sounds very exciting, but Marmee and father always tell her to be polite to Aunt March. “How is the game played, Aunt?”

“You must pretend to drink tea, receive guests, learn to sew.”

She wrinkles her nose, to Aunt March’s outrage. “It sounds boring.”

“It will be your life.”

 

iii.

She’s eleven when she asks Marmee to sew a pair of trousers for her. Meg is scandalized, Beth is supportive, and Amy, like she’s so prone to do as of late, lectures her on the impropriety of such a request.

Josephine doesn’t much care about the opinions of her sisters, but when Marmee gently tells her that only boys wear trousers whereas girls wear dresses, she wishes she were a boy for the first time.

 

iv.

There are guests in the March household. An old friend of father’s and his wife arrive at the house, planning to stay for a month. The man is a lawyer, and entertains the family with stories of his adventures in court.

Josephine thinks it sounds absolutely fascinating.

She would like to be a lawyer, she decides. To be an independent person, a person admired by the righteous, feared by the wrongdoers, and respected by them all. It captivates her attention in a way that all the homemaking stories, except for Marmee’s, have failed to do until now.

Josephine tells the man as much, and is startled by his condescending laughter and his remark that maybe her son will be a lawyer someday. The law, after all, is a man’s world, far beyond a lady’s scope.

She looks at her parents, notices the reproving glance father sends to his friend and Marmee’s sympathetic look when she catches her eye.

But neither of them contradicts him.

Part of it is manners, she knows. But mostly…. Josephine knows very well that both her mother and her father agree with their friend, even if they don’t take any pleasure in doing so. She’s filled with a sense fury and hopelessness that very nearly brings tears of frustration to her eyes.

She doesn’t want to be a lady. She doesn’t _feel_ like a lady. If ladies can’t be lawyers, can’t even go to college, then why does she want those things far more than she wants the handsome husband and the fine house people insist she should aspire to?

 

v.

Josephine devours stories like she does the cream cakes that are Hannah’s specialty. She loves the tales, its adventures and romance; longs to experience the world, to see all the places mentioned in great detail in her books. She’s a girl, she thinks disdainfully, which means that the only way she can have adventures in her life is by living them through the pages of her stories. Or so everyone keeps telling her.

So she begins to write her own.

 

vi.

On her thirteenth birthday, Josephine March becomes Jo.

She may not ever be able to go to college. She may not become a lawyer – or a doctor, a professor or any of the dozen different professions that appeal to her. She may have to resign herself to it.

But she can be independent. Oh, all right, perhaps not in the way she once dreamed.  But she doesn’t have to settle for a handsome husband and a fine house, and abandon the rest of her dreams. She can be a writer. She can put up plays and perform different roles. She can, she fantasizes sometimes, help other girls become lawyers and doctors and travel the world. She can. She will.

Josephine is Jo, and nobody else will ever tell her who she can or cannot be.

 


End file.
